The Council.She froze.
“What is it, Flick?” Chester asked, tilting his head at her. “What’s wrong?”
What was she to say? She hadn’t forged the invitations Arthie had asked her to send out, nor could she. Flick had overheard Arthie’s instructions at the docks. She knew what Arthie wanted her to do. And Flick couldn’t. This was the moment she had been dreading. The need for her talent.
She stared at her fingers, at the tremor she couldn’t shake. Holding anything was a pain, but holding something steady would be near impossible. She had tried. A cramp rendered her useless in moments.She values her hands very much, and I don’t see her using them to the fullest extent after this. The Ram couldn’t get Flick to return to her, so she had ensured she was useless to Arthie and Jin too.
“I can’t,” Flick whispered.
“You can’t what?” Jin asked.
She tried to elaborate and explain, but tears crowded her throat. Instead, she tugged on her sleeves, pulling them just above her wrists.
Her skin was bruised in shades of purple and green.
“She—” He broke off with a growl and stood up, directing his next words at Sidharth. “I need a medical kit.”
He didn’t ask her what happened. He didn’t press her for answers, and for that, she was strangely grateful.
Sidharth led them to another door without question. “This way.”
She glanced back at Matteo before the door closed behind them, an apology leaping to her tongue for the delay, but his brow was creased, his expression pained as he stared at her arms. He knew what it was like, she realized. He was an artist after all.
Jin dropped a hand to her lower back, guiding her behind Sidharth to a lavish washroom complete with a bench. Sidharth pulled a kit from the vanity drawer and spread its contents on the counter before leaving with a little bow.
Flick sat down as Jin riffled through the different ointments, bandages, and creams with his back to her. He was quiet, unnervingly so. Was he upset that she wasn’t going to be able to contribute to their plans in the way that they needed?
He turned back, setting an array of bottles on the bench before sitting beside her.
“Are you angry?” she asked, her voice small.
“Yes,” he replied, and sheheardhis anger, felt it. “How can someone call themselves your mother and do such a thing?”
Oh.
“If we weren’t already dedicated to tearing her down, I would be simply on account of this,” he continued. He reached for her hand. “May I?”
She nodded, and he set her wrist on his knee, her hand just below his thigh. He was cold. He had been since he was turned, and that was okay because she was always so warm.
“The bruises don’t hurt as much as, I don’t know, inside,” Flick said.
He nodded. “I know. This will help.”
HisI knowmade it sound as though he had been shackled in manacles himself. And she supposed he could have, at any point over the past ten years. He had lived a lifetime of this, she always seemed to forget. Maybe because when she was with him, she thought of days ahead, not experiences past.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “About your parents.”
The ointment stung her skin, but he was right: As he rubbed it into her wound, the relief was instant. Or it might have even been the feeling of his fingers on her skin, drawing small circles and stirring her blood.
“I—I don’t know how to feel about any of it,” Jin said, and she had the sense he was struggling to find the right words. “They had been missing for so long. Then I learned their hands weren’t as pristine as I long believed. I accepted it because they were going to right their wrongs here, and then the Ram just— That’s what shocked me the most, I think. How she killed them without a second thought.”
If she’d found a way to throw the Ram off their scent, would Jin’s parents be alive right now? Flick was too terrified to ask such a thing, to plant that thought in his mind.
“You’re not allowed to feel guilty, you hear?” Jin asked. “For not being able to forge. Promise me.”
Flick looked away. “I—I promise.”
“Good girl.”
